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When it comes to challenging Apple’s iPhone, Samsung is thinking small. The South Korean conglomerate is currently working on a smaller version of its popular Galaxy S III smartphone.

The new phone, which Samsung did not reveal when it will launch in the United States or at what price it will be, is likely targeting Apple’s newest iPhone, according to the Washington Post.

The smartphone, expected to be called, appropriately, the Galaxy S III mini, has a 4-inch screen — smaller than the 4.8-inch screen on the current iteration of the Galaxy S III smartphone but the same size as the display on the iPhone 5.

That’s not the only difference between this phone and its larger, 4.8-inch sibling. According to a specifications sheet from Samsung, the mini smartphone has a 5 megapixel camera instead of the 8 megapixel sensor on the larger phone, and it will also not operate on high-speed 4G LTE networks. That decision makes the device more of a mid-range phone, as many customers expect premium smartphones to connect to the fastest networks, according to the Washington Post.

The S III mini’s crisp Super AMOLED screen and general design borrows from the company’s top-selling smartphone. It has a 1GHZ dual-core processor and will run the latest version of Google’s Android system, Jelly Bean.

Browser Tools Can Help Block Tracking by Social Networks

The “like” button on Facebook and other social widgets on websites that track your online activity now face a growing number of startups that offer tools to keep them in check.

According to The New York Times, those little buttons on websites that let you share what you’ve read have an equally important function: They let the social networks track your travels on the Web, whether or not you click on them.

Now, a growing number of start-ups offer tools that help consumers keep that kind of tracking at bay.

Social widgets that track your moves are growing across the Web. They act as eyes on the Web. They watch you as you skim the day’s news or shop online.

According to The Times, Facebook is especially ubiquitous. Academic researchers in France and Australia recently found that more than 20 percent of the 10,000 most popular Web sites have a Facebook widget. That widget allows the social networking giant to keep track of which Web sites they visit, whether or not the Internet user is logged on to Facebook at the time.

But users do have options when it comes to keeping widgets in check.

One such tool is a widget-scrubbing program recently released by PrivacyChoice. It is a browser extension that monitors the strength of your privacy settings on Facebook and Google, including the option of disabling Facebook and Google Plus share buttons. In the first 24 hours after its release, 50,000 people used the tool, which the company calls PrivacyFix and offers for free.

Woman Gets 11,100 Trillion Euro Phone Bill

A woman in France might want to look into free nights and weekends.

Solenne San Jose received an 11,100 trillion euro phone bill, which was eventually fixed after her phone company admitted that it made a mistake (and people say there’s just no talking to some phone-service providers).

According to the Epoch Times, San Jose said that when she opened up her mail, her phone bill had some extra zeroes. About 12 extra zeroes. Her bill totaled 11,721,000,000,000,000 euros ($15,100 trillion).

“There were so many zeroes I couldn’t even work out how much it was,” Solenne San Jose of the Bordeaux region told the AFP news agency.

Bouygues Telecom, her phone company, told her that they could not revoke the computer-generated bill or stop the balance from being subtracted from her bank account.

Finally, San Jose was able to convince the company to admit the problem, according to the news agency. The bill was actually only 117.21 euros ($151).